We arrived early Tuesday morning and started working for the conference organisers straight away. This mainly consisted of sorting out the awful registration system. I then maned the door and make sure people filled out speaker evaluation forms. D-Arb set up the speaker's laptop, and I got to use some geek-fu to killall xscreensaver, dialogs are for sissies. It was pretty menial labour, but a free pass is a free pass.
I did get a brief chance to shake Mark Shuttleworth's hand, but no real conversation. Mark gave the first keynote. His focus was mainly on how the industry will change to adopt open source and what is needed on a desktop. Here is a summary:
Critical Desktop Factors
A certified stack/configuration needs to be created. This will comprise of a set of standardised software and hardware that is guaranteed to run. This stack will be fully supported and certified. For example and Oracle DB running on Ubuntu and certified tier-1 hardware should be guaranteed to both work and have support available. To this end some relationships with European hardware suppliers have been formalised. This idea of a fully certified and supported stack was mentioned several times throughout his keynote.
A support ecosystem needs to be created along with the stack. With companies selling support services around the world. To this end the first formal support agreement was announced the next day (and it was).
Roadmap
Immersive collaborative environments are the way forward. The most important open source software tools to have emerged are:
- diff
- patch
As for immersive environments, we are moving into the realm of 3D. This can be seen in projects such as XGl, Glitz or wobbly windows. This innovation is being driven by games:
| Then | business | text |
| games | graphics | |
| Now | business | graphics |
| games | 3D |
Short Term Goals
The short term goals for the next release of Ubuntu, Breezy badger, is to:
- Make Linux on the laptop, just work. i/e. WiFi, PDA interaction, hardware detection and configuration
- Make Linux easy for hardware vendors to pre-install.
- Bring the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) into Ubuntu.
- Create a reference implementation for customised (primarily education and local language) spinoffs.
OSS is South Africa
Change is interesting and fascinating and has the potential for great wealth creation in the African continent. OSS will provide fundamentally new ideas in Africa, which has a huge growth potential with 2 billion Africans, who by 2050 will have consumerist desires. The plan is to build the government will OSS and then bring the rest of the continent on as partners.
After a good night sleep we where up and ready early the next morning. The "school bus" driven by D-Arb picked us and we then went onto to pick up Dom before arriving at Convention Centre at 7:30am. Glenn and Carl where already waiting for us having only
Tracked: May 31, 17:25